Ultra wideband (UWB) is a promising technology for future data communications applications. UWB frequency characteristics are typically fulfilled if the fractional bandwidth Bf or the −10 dB bandwidth of the signal is greater than 20% or greater than 500 MHz, respectively.
A UWB system is essentially based on a base-band signal processing system, where wideband characteristics of radio transmission are obtained by generating short pulses of a typical duration of the order of nanoseconds. Based on an applied time domain-frequency domain dualism, temporal characteristics of UWB pulses directly reflect the frequency characteristics of the transmission. Therefore, high quality requirements are set to the pulse generation mechanism in UWB systems in order to fulfil the frequency requirements of a UWB transmission.
UWB pulses are generated in a UWB pulse generator, which may use a plurality of timing signals as input. Characteristics of the timing signals play an essential role in the temporal characteristics of the UWB pulses, and therefore, it is desired to consider techniques for producing high-quality timing signals for such UWB pulse generators.